The power struggle over Rumsfeld

[teryang]

This article below makes the case that a Rumsfeld dismissal would mark a further move to consolidate power by the neo-con clique. It struck me that this sort of consolidation of power would represent the beginning of a crescendo phase of fascism. The outcome would determine whether we would be dominated by a low profile totalitarian regime ruled by low intensity terror (as I recall Peter Dale Scott's phrase for it) or whether we get the full blown variety where the ideologues establish party control over the corporatists.

If the twentieth century European model for fascism prevails conscription would be in and new bureaucracies bridging state and corporate sectors would prevail over private enterprise concepts of economy, which are in jeopardy now of being thrown completely out the window as the drive to conquer the Asian resources and markets emerges in its full regalia.

http://www.counterpunch.org/leupp12252004.html

Neocons Target Rumsfeld
Rumsfeld, His Critics and the Draft
By GARY LEUPP

<The big conflict during the first Bush term was of course that between Colin Powell on the one hand and Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and all the neocons on the other. That conflict will soon be resolved with Powell's departure. Despite setbacks, the neocons have generally enhanced their position since the election. The key figures (Wolfowitz, Feith, Libby, Wurmser, Bolton, Abrams) retain their influence within the second tier of power. Neocon propagandists such as Bill Kristol, David Frum, and Richard Perle enjoy unbounded access to a generally deferential media; when not in government, they flash credentials as members of a handful of interconnected rightwing think tanks. Some suppose the neocons have triumphed, but that is simplistic. Much depends on the neocons' relationships to Secretary of State-designate Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and new National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley.>

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In any case, my position is that the full blown variety needs to take its course to reach its ultimate demise and repudiation. Rumsfeldts version of state power as represented by the assault on the Constitution is more sinister as it has lulled the public to sleep.

[Florida_Geek]

1. I have stated my belief that Bush knows he

needs a Draft for warm bodies, and Rummy will go and the new SoD will call for one, and with a "heavy heart" Bush will accept his new SoD call for a draft.

Then the invasion of Iran and Syria and any other country he want will be on.

[Name removed]

2. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[enough]

3. In the coming struggle over the draft, they want Rumsfeld out.

snip>

In April 2004, when U.S. troop strength in Iraq was 115,000, Kristol and Robert Kagan wrote that, according to "close observers of the conflict in Iraq," "at least 30,000 extra troops" would be needed "just to deal with the current crisis. Even more troops may well be needed to fully pacify the country. And it would be useful to have as many of those troops as possible there sooner rather than later."' U.S. failure to pacify Iraq was above all "the product of Rumsfeld's fixation on high-tech military 'transformation,' his hostility to manpower-intensive nation-building in places like Afghanistan and Iraq, and his refusal to increase the overall size of the military in the first place" (Emphasis added.) Rumsfeld should have foreseen that there might be large-scale resistance, but "He failed to put in place in Iraq a force big enough to handle the challenges at hand. That is a significant failure, and we do not yet know the price that will be paid for it."

The Kristol-Kagan piece, which fell just short of calling for Rumsfeld to resign, depicted his focus on structural changes (that which he sees as his true legacy) as a "fixation" distracting him from the worthy cause of "nation-building" and indeed making him "hostile" to that cause because it's so necessarily "manpower-intensive." It suggested that Rumsfeld was a restraining presence in an administration that could and should use its military more aggressively in nations needing regime change.

snip>

[bemildred]

4. Very Alice-in-Wonderlandy.

But probably correct in it's assessment of the "debate".

It is characteristic of these sorts of arrogant blowhards - e.g.
Napoleon, Hitler - in their later phases to assume that they can
simply command what they wish despite the facts on the ground, and
usually the nature of the power they hold forbids them to back down.

I have been assuming since Selection-2000 that normal political
correction in no longer possible, it will be an internal collapse
and insurrection as in the USSR or imposed change from without. It
would be amusing in a way to see a re-imposition of democratic rule
in the the USA from without, say by the Russians.

At present I favor the former, both because we lack the means to
pursue global war - like Italy in Ethiopia, our weakness stands
exposed in Iraq - and because the potential enemies all know the score.
They will fend off what provocations they must while letting the Arab
nationalists and Jihadi's bleed us white, until we faint.